BLOODLETTING
In the early 1800s, William Cullen was one of the many physicians who treated patients using the technique of bloodletting in asylums. The practice involved draining the patients’ blood until they fainted to attempt to cure them of their mental illnesses. During this period, if one was deemed mentally ill, they were classified as an animal, a brute, or even a lunatic. This classification brought justification for the physician’s actions, they believed that each ‘animal’ needed to be tamed; which led to draining lunatics' blood to relieve the patient's sanity.
Cullen was an advocate for cutting the jugular vein, but there were many other places such as the hands, arms, and feet that would be cut for bleeding. While the practice was widely used, it seemed to always accompany other methods of treatment such as emetics and a near-starvation diet to ensure that each test subject was reduced to a dismal state. In the U.S., a prominent doctor, Benjamin Rush (one of the signatures on the Declaration of Independence), followed the teachings of his European counterparts and believed that madness was the result of irregular circulation of the blood in the brain. Rush took his practice so far as to drain eighty percent t of the body’s blood and encouraged others to do the same. When other physicians found out about how much blood Rush was draining from his patients, they criticized him because it was about 20 to 40 ounces that was taken at a time.. Not only was bloodletting used to treat the mentally ill, but it was also used to treat infections and fevers. In 1793, the yellow fever epidemic was in Philadelphia and Rush was treating the ill with his bloodletting technique, draining the diseased blood from his patient’s bodies. Rush might have chosen the prime opportunity to test his treatment regime on the public, which his opponent William Cobbett hoped to bring to light.
Bloodletting experimentation often produced the results physicians at the time were looking for, the test subject to be calm; these results were due to patients being too weak from the massive blood loss. Other symptoms that were observed when ounces of blood were drained from patients included syncope, fevers, delirium, diarrhea, and dehydration. Even if the same amount of blood was drawn from each patient, they would experience symptoms differently. Meaning, if fifteen ounces were taken, some patients would pass out and others would experience other symptoms far worse. Bloodletting is a practice that many physicians encourage and is a major factor that plays into why this technique is still used in some cases of modern medicine.
Sources:
Davis, A. & Appel, T. (1979). Bloodletting instruments in the National Museum of History and Technology. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Gillray, James. Painting of man being bloodletted, (no. date).
Hall, Marshall, M.D. “An Essay on the Circulation of Blood, and a Treatise on the Morbid and Curative Effects of Loss of Blood.” Library of Sterling Medical College, p. 149-151, 1835.
Shuman, MD, Andrew G. and Edelman, Marc and Fins, Joseph, Bleeding by the Numbers: Rush Versus Corbett (September 1, 2014). The Pharos (Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society), Autumn 2014. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2974410
Shyrock, Medicine and society in America, 31-32.
Tartakovsky, Margarita. “Read About the Birth of the Mental Asylum.” World of Psychology, 8 July 2018, psychcentral.com/blog/the-birth-of-the-mental-asylum/.
Whitaker, Robert. Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub, 2002. Print.